Felicity Young - An Easeful Death

‘Yes, wonder what the hell that is? I guess we’ll have to wait for the pathologist to prise it out.’ Wayne pivoted on his heel and scanned the shop floor. ‘And where’s our illustrious leader?’

‘On his way.’ Angus said. He was next in seniority after Monty. ‘I’m going to talk to the woman who found the body. Stevie, come with me. Wayne and Barry, you guys comb the whole shop for ways the killer could have broken in. SOCO will be here soon, work with them. Also, get one of the uniforms to stop anyone else using the lifts. That’s the only way he could have got the body up here, they’ll have to be carefully examined.’

‘Unlike Linda Royce, this one wouldn’t have needed props to keep her posed,’ Stevie said to Angus as they walked towards the shop and floor manager who’d discovered the body.

‘True,’ Angus said. ‘And I’d like to know how he got the body up here without triggering any of the alarms. I favour the lift, though I guess he could have used the stairs. But the body would have been heavy and awkward to carry up three flights. We’ll get SOCO to check them anyway.’

A middle-aged man and an older woman, the shop and floor managers respectively, stood tense and anxious next to shelves of bathroom ornaments.

‘When can we open up for business, detective?’ the shop manager asked. The man looked like he’d dressed in a hurry. The shirt under his suit jacket was buttoned wrong and his face was furred with brindle stubble. His mouth, still gaping with shock, looked like that of the blue porcelain fish staring at Stevie from the shelf behind.

‘I’m afraid you’ll probably be closed for the rest of the week, Sir.’

The man sighed heavily and looked at his floor manager. Her face was pale under a thick layer of foundation, her voice a tremolo of barely contained hysteria. ‘I just don’t understand how anyone could have got up here without triggering the motion detectors. I set the alarms myself last night.’

‘You don’t have security guards?’ Angus asked, looking from one to the other of them.

The man said, ‘Only roving patrols to check up on things if the alarm is triggered, that’s all most department stores have these days. Burglaries are rare in our type of store, most of the criminals seem to content themselves with shoplifting.’

A constable approached the group. ‘Excuse me, Sir.’ His eyes darted to the managers, unsure if he should be speaking in front of them. Angus gave him a nod and he said, ‘We know how the alarm was deactivated. The external phone line that goes to the control room of the security company was cut. The alarm would have rung, but wouldn’t have gone through their monitoring system.’

‘You still rely on that old system?’ Stevie asked incredulously.

The shop manager became flustered, defensive. ‘We haven’t been in this building long. We inherited the security system from the previous owners. We were going to update next year.’

‘Surely someone must have heard the racket?’ Stevie questioned the constable.

‘We’re asking around, Ma’am. But you know what it’s like in the city on weeknights. Quiet as the grave.’

She would have preferred a different choice of simile, but had to agree with him. The manager turned his head to follow the progress of a group of overall-clad forensic officers. Stevie caught Angus’s eye, telling him with a look that this was not the place for any further interviews.

He said to the managers, ‘I’m going to ask one of our officers to accompany you to Central. I’d like the next round of questions to be conducted in an interview room. We need to get details from you about the closing up routine of the shop, the alarms etc.’

‘Taking us down to the station? Is that necessary?’ The woman’s age-spotted hand reached to the chain at her neck. ‘We’re not under arrest are we?’

Stevie swallowed down her impatience. ‘No, you’re not under arrest, but we need to talk to you away from these distractions.’

When they had gone, Stevie said to Angus, ‘I keep flashing back to Linda Royce’s body at the bank. James De Vakey said we needed to check the security guards again. I was going to have them polygraphed today. I was hoping there might’ve been security guards here too—they would have provided us with a handy commonality, but it seems there were none near the place.’

‘Okay, you go back to the bank guards, though the chances of their involvement are looking slimmer. I’ll interview the two managers back at Central.’ Angus smoothed down his hair as he looked around the shop floor, which was now bustling with police activity. ‘Two hot cases needing a separate team on each, and where the hell is Monty? He’s the only one with the authority to enlist the help of more suburban dees. We can’t cope with all this alone.’

‘De Vakey might be able to help us with a thing or two, I’ll give him a call.’ Stevie reached into her bag for her phone. But before she had time to dial the lift pinged, announcing an arrival.

Angus swore. ‘I told them to secure the lifts.’

The doors opened revealing Monty looking very much the worse for wear in the clothes he’d been wearing the day before. His butter-coloured shirt had turned rancid and his pants were concertinaed with crease marks. His skin was pale against his auburn hair, making the stubble on his face shine. Stevie’s heart sank with the departing lift, recognising that self-loathing, morning-after look. She lowered her voice. ‘Jeez, you look like shit,’ she murmured.

He regarded her through eyes the colour of single malt. ‘Thanks. I must look better than I feel. Where is she?’

She pointed towards the body with her thumb and watched Monty as he wove his way through the bedroom and bathroom accessories. She met Angus’s look of disappointed concern with one of her own.

Angus let out his breath. ‘I’m going to check on SOCO, then head back to Central. You’d better go fill Monty in on what little we know.’

She joined Monty as he leaned over the body. He was silently taking in the shaved head and the strange serenity of the painted face.

‘We’ve sent the shop and floor managers back to Central for further questioning. So far we haven’t a clue how our guy got in with the body. He disabled the monitored alarm by cutting the external telephone wire. Anyone could have located it if they’d known what they were looking for, then again I guess there’s always the chance it was an inside job...’

Monty’s hand flew to his mouth and he recoiled from the body with a look of anguish.

‘What’s wrong?’ Stevie asked as he began to lurch his way towards the toilets at the other end of the floor. The ladies’ room was closest; there was no time for etiquette. She followed him in as he staggered into the nearest stall.

She waited on the other side of the stall door, trying to block out the sound of his retching and became aware of an incongruous odour. The typical public washroom smells of soap and disinfectant were overlaid by the rising lead of the early morning commute and the tang of coffee from a nearby cafe. A cool breeze on her cheek made her turn her head to its source and it was then that she saw the gaping rectangular hole where the windowpane should have been. The glass itself was leaning against the wall as if carefully placed there by a glazier. She hurried over to the window ledge and peered into the alleyway below. Startled, she did a double take. Only a short distance above the ground, attached to a system of ropes and pulleys that ran the length of the building, dangled a window cleaner’s trolley.

The retching sounds from the stall had stopped and she yelled to Monty to come and look. Getting no answer she turned to find him sitting against the wall with his knees drawn up to his chest and his head bowed. When he made no response she put a hand on his shoulder and squatted to his level.